“Listen,” says I, “I got your computer. It ain’t working and I need it to work. It should have been fixed today but y’all sent the wrong parts and a repairman that couldn’t distinguish this computer from a top hat. I got the special AppleCare protection plan in order to avoid all this sort of stuff. SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE. . . . . . Please.”

Now APPLE says they’re going to send a new computer to me, seeing as I’ve been “put out” but first I have to wait for an email containing the return labels and a release form.

Email? says I, ok.

Wait.

6:30 p.m. still no email from APPLE.

How long before a dead APPLE computer starts to smell bad? Should I refrigerate or what?

Like this:

The paper this morning gave us the latest news regarding the “fattest” states in the union and I’m proud to say that Louisiana is number 4! My home state of Alabama is #2 and the state where most of my children were born was #1 (say hey Mississippi!). I confess, I couldn’t be prouder. All you wimpy Yankee states ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
Randy Booth and I were talking this past weekend and decided that our new motto should be “Eat what you want and die like a man!”

I love it.

Like this:

“Though they’re all mostly short and entirely unpretentious, O’Connor’s stories leave me feeling winded and humbled. Her endings always manage to surprise me even when I’ve read them numerous times before. As a rule, you can generally read the first paragraph, close your eyes and imagine what the worst possible fate could be for the characters described, and then continue reading to gradually discover that whatever the worst-case scenario you had in mind, it probably wasn’t sufficiently horrifying. And yet somehow, with your head pounding, you know that the story was accelerating inevitably to this point from the very first word. This is the way it had to be, and to insist otherwise feels almost immodest. Somehow, you can even sense, beyond whatever it is O’Connor herself had in mind when she started, a voice affirming, amid the mind-bending messiness, ‘It is good.’ . . .

[O’Connor] can never be popular enough, because there’s something uniquely healing in her powers. She cures the heart of all desensitizing sentimentality. In her company, we will be shocked awake from whatever anaesthetizing spirits have rendered us incapable of thinking clearly about ourselves and the world we inhabit. She delivers us from the deluding evil that is ever apocalyptic’s moving target. Listening to her stories changes everything. A new world is busting through the fabric of folly. It isn’t polite. It isn’t what we’re expecting. And it’s offering us a choice that we will have to make, even if it kills us.”
(Everyday Apocalypse, 28-29)

And I says, yep and right on, amen, hear, hear, and all that.

Like this:

Been on vacation and traveling the last couple of weeks and was able to get a little reading done (and I know *everybody* has read these already . . . probably years ago, but, as usual, I’m trying to catch up). It’s been interesting and fun. Here are some of the titles:

Blink and Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

and on pop culture icons and what we can learn from them, Everyday Apocalypse by David Dark.

Also finished James Blaylock’s All the Bells on Earth.

And speaking of novels, I finally got around to reading Susan Howatch’s amazing Starbridge trilogy (Glittering Images, Glamorous Powers, and Ultimate Prizes) and I’m ready to start on the last three in the series.